Have you ever been wrongly accused?

I am moving on. Krama will sort out who is to blame. I hope my ex-friends can move on too. I wasn’t blameless in university either.

Yes, a manager fired me in my teens for stealing, come to find out he had been stealing the whole time. About five of us were fired before we found out.

@knowitall That kind of thing burns me up! That happened on my first job. 500 dollars was missing and they had the police come in and interview a few of the “lesser” employees. The bad thing for me was that I had just gotten hired at a real job and felt that if I left, it would look like I had taken the money. So I worked 2 jobs for 6 months to make my point. It turns out that the manager had taken the money.
Yes, I have moved on as it happened 40 years ago, but if I’m reminded of it, I still get mad about it.

Yes – I’m not going to go into details because it’s too easy to identify the actors in the drama.

But the high level story is that the Director of the non-profit agency where I was working at the time was in huge trouble for racist comments and racist actions. These actions were not only documented on paper, but also she had been caught on cable TV (the minutes of our board meetings were broadcast on a local government cale channel.)

Anyway, as the noose was descending around the Director’s neck, he started accusing us – his high level admin staff—of all sorts of things. A patently obvious way of deflecting to save his own ass. Several of us – probably four top level people – were jettisoned within a month or two.

I liked the job, but the director was a lunatic. At one point as this was coming to a boil, I said to myself – I know I’m good, I know I didn’t do what I’m accused of, I don’t need this shit.

I resigned, and a weight was off my shoulders.

The good part was that the Director had a reputation in our industry as a total nutcase, so when I went looking for jobs, everyone had heard of this Director and the incidents at our agency, and I didn’t need to explain a thing.

Bottom line: Get over it and move on.

I got into a spat with a co-worker and then was accused of arranging a phone call by my grandmother to his wife with a false report of his possible cheating with a office girl who I was involved with. I had done no such thing but no one bothered to ask me any more about it and it ended up costing me my job. Then I figured out that it was the branch manager’s wife who had made the call, he obviously knew it and kept quiet about it so that I would get the blame.

I have been accused of being very calm person / pushover many times which may not be true all the time..)~

I think anything more than 4 years old is time to get over. Take charge of your own life at this point.

In primary school, the teacher, bespectacled gorgon, accused me of raiding the christmas calendar.

Yes. I move on by knowing and asserting the truth, and speaking out about it.

It can be pretty crushing when someone with a lot of authority condemns you and thinks you’re lying about telling the truth, and/or lies about it, and you get treated as if guilty. Fortunately, that version hasn’t happened to me about anything particularly serious, that I remember.

Worst was probably my ex who was constantly suspecting me of some sort of infidelity or another, and thought I’d lied about being with another woman before we got together (...). That was pretty awful, and I wish I’d had the wisdom to have gotten out of that relationship right away…

When I was 21 and a camp counselor (and a very good one) at a church camp run by an independent church, I was accused of being a satanist—and holding satanic rites or pagan ceremonies of some sort with the boys in my cabin.

Sounds preposterous, but boy how rumors fly.

A kid made it up who was angry at me because I had to enforce our camp disciplinary policies. That’s all. But the “children’s minister”—a man who was really just a retired truck driver who was friends with the pastor, had a case of professional jealousy and took the rumor to a higher level.

As a volunteer, I taught a senior adult Sunday School class and worked with the kids in a Junior Church setting. I was there every time the doors were open—and highly respected by everyone as being a talented and good influence on the children. I was only 21/22 years old. But the Children’s minister at the church was affirming these stories because he was jealous of me, and people were believing the rumors and people who didn’t know me were withdrawing their children. I was told I was no longer allowed to work with children—some believed the rumors—- but others were afraid of the perception——and facts were irrelevant.

Eventually, I went to the church elders and made my case.

The boy who started the rumor denied to his parents that what he was saying even happened. None of the boys in my cabin said the events occurred—and most of the rumors could be traced to one kid and a friend of his,

When I was cleared, the pain and consequences persisted. When I went back to ONE of the elders who helped me through the ordeal, he said, “Well, what do you want us to do? Fire the (children’s minister) and YOU take his job? ”

Indeed, I didn’t want to do that.

But I did continue to work with children for two more years in settings I did not have to work with the children’s pastor. This was the only way to clear myself—so that everyone would know that the church elders looked into it and found me innocent of the claims and I continued to work with the children—but the pain and I think even the stigma continued, no matter how much I did or how good it was. I even led a musical with the youth by the time it was over.

Some of the adults responsible for spreading rumors eventually were fired or forced to resign for other reasons unrelated to my case, But I am usually the first target of such people because I march to the beat of a different drummer. Its easy to pick on or target someone who is a little different and doesn’t hang out with a powerful crowd, or does things his or her own way.

I am an ordained minister now, and have seen at least a dozen people, including another case with myself, be completely innocent and have to resign—over accusations, rumors, lies, or nothing at all—because of people’s wrong beliefs, because of a deliberate lie, or because of perception that persists or remains. People who work in the churches and people who work with school-age children are the most vulnerable. Especially if they are a little different from others.